Sean Hannity will mark his 1,000th episode of the Fox News Channel show that bears his name on Wednesday, a show that's dominated its spot in the ratings in recent years. He's got a nationally syndicated radio talk show that has 13 million listeners, second only to Rush Limbaugh. The Hollywood Reporter recently named the conservative talker one of the most powerful people in media.

That's a successful career by almost any measure, not that Hannity can bring himself to acknowledge it.

"This may sound strange," the 51-year-old says. "But I don't spend a lot of time – I can't think of any – thinking I've made it or I'm successful. I probably should seek therapy for this. I've actually always felt that I'm doing my last show.

"I've always had a sense that in this business you do your show, you get your ratings, but then I've got another show tonight. It's sort of like a hamster or a gerbil on that wheel, putting out that show."

Hannity hopped on that wheel in the '80s after he decided to leave his native New York for Santa Barbara, in large part because he'd heard that the radio station at UC Santa Barbara was run by volunteers and that included the on-air hosts.

"It was very strange," he says of his lifelong love of radio. "I was young and I used to listen to talk radio in New York. Whatever I was doing I always was listening to the radio. My parents were always saying, 'Turn that radio off!' late at night."

Working as a contractor in Santa Barbara, Hannity eventually landed a show on KCSB-FM, the college station there, learning on the job how to be a talk show host.

"When I first started I was terrible," he says. "You don't know what you're doing. But I had certain instincts. When the red light came on a high-energy Sean came out. For me it was instinct. For me, having strong opinions was what I was used to."

His conservative opinions and his willingness to share them led to Hannity getting fired by the station after a little less than a year, though a little controversy never hurt and he landed on his feet with a radio gig in Huntsville, Ala. From there he hopped to an Atlanta radio station, which also put him the right place to further polish his TV skills through frequent guest spots on CNN shows.

Hannity was a guest along with Tavis Smiley at the cable network one day in June 1994 when O.J. Simpson was named a suspect in the murder of his wife and her friend. Because he and Smiley were comfortable talking live on the air they stayed on CNN for four hours that day.

"Tavis and I both look at that moment as very pivotal for us," Hannity says. "News was very different then, they didn't have people to go to (in the field). So here are the anchors with very little information and yet this case was explosive enough that there was a lot to talk about it. With both of us being able to talk a lot on the air it worked very well for both of us."

Hannity landed at Fox News Channel in 1996, brought there by co-founder Roger Ailes who'd earlier hired him for a weekly show at CNBC. At Fox, the conservative Hannity was teamed with the liberal Alan Colmes for "Hannity & Colmes," which ran 13 years on the network.

On "Hannity," which immediately followed for him, the host says he thinks he's become a calmer presence on the air now.

"I guess I was perhaps more inclined to really want to argue and fight when I was younger," he says. "I'm more interested in getting to the heart of the matter now – though I still like to argue."

His viewers or listeners might not notice much mellowing from day to day – he still gets heated on topics ranging from the Obama presidency to the attacks on the United States' embassy in Libya to the ongoing battle in Congress over taxes and spending.

His evolving position on immigration, however, did raise eyebrows when Hannity started talking about it not long ago. He's always been a believer in securing the nation's borders, Hannity says, but unlike some pundits or political leaders he also believes that the 11 million or so undocumented people living here now should have some way to stay here legally.

"I'm for immigration but I want it to be legal," Hannity says. "I think the way to solve it is once and for all to secure the border first. Telling the estimated 11 million people to go home, I don't think that's going to happen."

One thousand shows into "Hannity," he's happy carrying on with the show.

"I do feel really, really blessed to do what I love to do," Hannity says. "I can tell you, the first time I got behind a radio microphone and that little red light came on, it just changed me."

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